Lean digital, pioneered by the manufacturing industry, is now a driving focus for transformation in sectors such as retail, healthcare, finance, logistics, and more. To get the most out of this process, which drives waste reduction through continuous improvement, you need a roadmap. Here’s what your roadmap needs to work.
It maps the client or customer journey
At the heart of lean digital is the customer, using processes and technologies to ensure they get the greatest value out of working with you. By eliminating unnecessary and complex processes (waste), your digital solutions should gather important and actionable feedback, sending it right to the teams for them to work on to enhance the value chain.
It creates an agile environment
Everyone knows that agility – or the ability to respond quickly and effectively in changing circumstances – is a must-have in a business. You need to meet customer or client demand exactly when it appears, not month’s later when it’s likely changed. With the ability to pull in huge amounts of data and present real-time analysis directly to your teams through tech like digital twins and virtual prototyping, digital lean solutions create virtual space to experiment, optimise, and deliver faster than ever before.
It focuses on design
This means that your business can understand customer demands and decisions, explore ways to meet them, and make those products or services a reality. This can be used to develop products the market wants and avoid those it doesn’t. It’s also about improving services and processes to meet customer needs more effectively. For example, eliminating bottlenecks in loan or credit applications, delivery processes, administration, scheduling appointments, or onboarding a customer through automation means happier customers.
It uses big data
There are exceptionally valuable streams of data flowing through your business, and it’s essential that your digital lean solutions utilise them. You can evaluate everything from how customers are buying your product and their product feedback all the way to equipment performance, efficiencies in workflows, and energy usage, all to identify areas of waste and opportunities for improvement. And any service or business can benefit from it, from NPOs looking for areas of interest that resonate with their supporters or retailers evaluating demand for eco-friendly products to healthcare and financial service providers using it to streamline services and make them more accessible to service users.
Digital lean is not a one-size fits all solution, but it is something every business can benefit from if the approach is customised, aligned with your goals, and integrated into your teams. At Otto, our IT consulting services are here to guide your digital lean roadmap and tech deployment. With a no-fuss approach where we’ll never sell you something you won’t use, we’re making digitisation simpler, more accessible, and more rewarding.
Jordan is the Chief Commercial Officer at Otto. Jordan is here to help clients remove roadblocks and achieve the business goals they’ve set out. Jordan’s biggest focus is Customer Experience, Business Relationship Management, Risk Management and Strategy.
